07 June 2013

Swedish Grammar App For Android Released

Do you study Swedish? Do you already know some of the Swedish language and want to learn more? Try our new app, Svensk grammatik! (Summary in Swedish below)

Not only grammar
Tallstugans förlag, owned by the same family as Kalmstrom Enterprises and earlier the mother company of the kalmstrom.com products, have published an app for youths and adults who study Swedish.

The name of the app is Svensk grammatik, which means "Swedish grammar", but even if the focus is on the grammar this app also gives rules for Swedish word formation and pronunciation. The Swedish grammar is closely connected with Swedish pronunciation and word formation, so it comes naturally to give rules for all three in the same app.

198 articlesSvensk grammatik is intended to give a full overview over the Swedish grammar system. Here you can find rules and guidelines for anything you might wonder about when you study Swedish as a foreign or second language, from the basics to the very advanced.

The information is divided into 198 articles, and the detailed table of contents makes it easy to find what you are looking for. As everything is explained in Swedish you need to know some Swedish to benefit from the app - and you will surely learn more while using it!

Examples with soundIn Svensk grammatik we show how the rules work in examples, and many of these have sound. The sound makes the examples easier for students to remember and use as models, and it is of course also a help to hear the Swedish pronunciation.

Grammar terms explained
All the typical grammar terms are explained in detail in separate articles, but when used in other articles they are explained in pop-ups. This means that the explanations do not disturb students who are used to grammar terms, but if you don't understand a word like "noun", "subject" or "vowel" you can just press it to get a short sentence and some examples to help you remember.

Google Play and AmazonSvensk grammatik is now available at Amazon and Google Play. This means that if you study Swedish and use an Android smart-phone or tablet, you can always have information about the Swedish language at hand.

The iOS version of Svensk grammatik, for iPad, iPone and iPod, is also ready and approved for release in App Store. This app is scheduled to be released by the end of this month.

We plan to market Svensk grammatik in Windows Store too, but some changes have to be made before the app will work on Windows phones as well. If you study Swedish and use a Windows device, please tell us!

20 years of grammar teaching aids
The new app is yet another step in a production chain that begun twenty years ago. I then wrote a series of books on Swedish grammar, word formation and pronunciation. Included in the series were also exercises that helped students of the Swedish language to test if they had understood the rules. The series is nowadays compressed into one Swedish grammar book, and it is still sold and used in schools and by students.

Next step was a program on a cd-rom with the rules and exercises. That was when my son Peter, our CEO and Systems Designer, became involved. He saw the benefits of using the texts of my books and adding sounds and photos, and he developed ways to make the exercises more fun to work with.

The third step was the website with rules and guidelines on Swedish grammar, wordformation and pronunciation that we published in November last year. It has approximately the same content as the cd-rom, but it is modernized and adapted to use on the web. For now the website is only meant for schools, but we plan to add a possibility for students of the Swedish language to subscribe to it for a low fee.

The fourth step
Now the fourth step has been taken - the app for mobile devices. This first version has no exercises, but all the rules are there, and we hope it will be useful for students of the Swedish language all over the world.

Also teachers might find it useful to have all rules easily at hand. The books and the website are used not only by students but also in training of teachers, and the app will hopefully be a good complement.